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Text:
Matthew 13:1-23
W 8th Sunday after Pentecost Growing
Ears In the name of him who has sown the
imperishable seed of the Word of Life into our hearts, dear friends in
Christ: This morning’s Gospel lesson has
our Lord Jesus sitting in a boat as he tells the Parable of the Sower to a
crowd of people standing on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. It’s one of his better-known parables; but it
is, on the surface anyway, not very remarkable.
It’s nothing more than a description of the most elementary principles
of agriculture. They are basic facts of
nature: seeds don’t sprout when they
cannot penetrate the soil and so get eaten by birds, nor do they fare very well
when planted in shallow, stony soil or when they have to complete with weeds
for precious water, nutrients, and sunlight.
They do much better when planted in rich, deep soil where measures are
taken for weed control. It’s common
sense stuff, really; especially for people who were living as close to the land
as the crowd listening to Jesus say these things. And you can imagine some guy standing in the
back, some guy who was dragged there under protest by his insistently pleading
wife who wanted him to come and listen to the wondrous Rabbi from So what? Well,
perhaps you noticed that there is a break in the Gospel reading for this
morning – that several verses between the Parable of the Sower and its
explanation are missing. What happens in
those missing verses is that Jesus concludes his discourse to the crowd, and
then his disciples privately ask him the question, “Lord, why do you always
speak to the people in parables?” The
startling response of Jesus is essentially this: “So that they won’t understand what I’m
talking about.” To quote him exactly, he
says to his disciples, “To you it has been given to know the secrets
of the kingdom of heaven; but to them it has not been given. For to the one who has, more will be given,
and he will have an abundance; but from the one who has not, even what he has
will be taken away. This is why I speak
to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not
hear, nor do they understand. … But
blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear.” I have several rows of sweet corn in my garden. It has sprouted ears, but it doesn’t hear a thing – at least it’s never given any indication of it. Likewise, if I had planted potatoes, they would have eyes, but they wouldn’t see anything. In the same way, there are people who are spiritual vegetables. Though they have the necessary faculties to see and hear in a natural sense, they are blind and deaf to things of God. As a matter of fact, the Scriptures indicate that we were all that way initially. It’s a result of being born of sinful parents into a fallen world. But for people who remain in that condition, the words of Jesus will never be properly understood. The Bible is for them a closed book and would be even if they were to memorize every word of it. The point is that if you understand anything more, if you really apprehend for yourself the spiritual significance of what Jesus says, it’s not because you’re some kind of theological genius, but because you have been given by God’s grace and the power of the Holy Spirit the gift of spiritual sight and hearing. Only those who have this gift, only those who have been given the ears for it, can hear what Jesus says and understand. This is part of the reason why it
isn’t much help to quote Bible passages to support your arguments when
discussing some point of controversy with someone who is not a believer in Jesus. Not only do they not recognize the Scriptures
as a source of authority, which is a problem to be sure; but just as
importantly, they really can’t grasp what is being said on a spiritual level. It stays on the surface, so to speak, like
the seed that fell on the path. It
doesn’t penetrate the hard packed crust.
The same is true of people who accept the Scriptures as being true and
authoritative, but who do not have faith in Jesus as their Savior and
Lord. Among several good examples are
the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who though they might know very well what the
Bible says and say that they believe it, invariably come away with meanings
other than the ones God intended. This
is why (if you were so inclined) you could stand there are on your porch all
day long discussing this Bible verse or that with a pair of Witnesses who rang
your doorbell and never really get through to them. In a spiritual sense, you’d have as much
success talking to corn and potatoes.
It’s not just that they don’t get it, it’s that they can’t. That’s not to say that there’s no
hope for them; but rather, that to get through you have to start at the
beginning. That’s where the Lord gives
the gift of spiritual sight and hearing through faith in Jesus, and thereby
makes a person one of his disciples. How
does that happen? The same way it
happened to you. God gives these gifts
through the Holy Spirit who works through the Word to first convict a person of
sin. That’s what breaks the hard crust
on the surface of the soil that causes spiritual blindness and deafness,
because what that crust really is, is sinful pride and smug independence. It’s the “There ain’t no God and I can take
care of myself” of the unbeliever, and it’s the “I can make God happy by what I
do for him” of the cultist who imagines that he can by his own efforts earn his
way into the favor of God by following the cult’s prescription for
success. Until that hard crust is
broken, that sense of self sufficiency demolished, nothing good can grow in a
person. But when the sharp and even
harder Law of God cuts through that surface like a plow, sometimes assisted by
the circumstances of life under the Law’s curse that shake a person’s self
confidence and make him realize, “No, I really can’t take care of myself and I
am afraid of God’s judgment”, then a person is ready to receive the living seed
of the Gospel. That’s the Word of God that
proclaims how, in his infinite mercy, God sent his Son to die for the sins of
the world, and how forgiveness of sins and life eternal are granted to all who
put their trust in his atoning sacrifice.
That Gospel message is living seed to the dead soil, and where it can
take root in the cracks and fissures caused by the Law, the life of faith can
begin to grow. And where there is the
life of faith, there is also the ability to discern spiritually the Words of
Jesus. You have a disciple of Christ –
and to them it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven. But again, I want to stress that this is
God’s work through the Word and Holy Spirit.
We can put a hand to the plow by proclaiming the Law, and we can cast
the living seed by sharing the Gospel; but only God can break the soil’s
surface and make the seed grow. But for us this is past tense. We’ve already been blessed with the gift of spiritual sight and hearing. For most of us it happened when we were baptized and our old, sinful natures were condemned and drowned and put to death with Christ. That’s what softened the soil so that we could also rise to new life with Christ as we heard the wonderful news that his death was for our sin. Then the Holy Spirit breathed into us the breath of life, and we who were formerly nothing but dead soil in the shape of infant human bodies became living beings. And perhaps there are others here who came alive in faith later in life; but either way, it was God’s miraculous gift working in you that brought you to life and to the capability of understanding the words and teachings of Jesus. You have been given by God ears that can hear. But
now take let’s take it a step further: I
confess that I don’t know a great deal about farming; but one thing I do know
is that the goal of all who farm is to maximize the productivity of their soil. And so they buy the best seed, and they use the
most appropriate kinds of fertilizer, and they spray for weeds and so on in
order to squeeze the best possible harvest out of every acre. You all understand that. So it should come as no surprise that our
heavenly Father seeks to do the same thing with you. He has given you ears to hear so that you
will grow up spiritually to produce full ears, as it were, of the fruits
of righteousness. Or to say it another
way, with the gift of God to hear and understand comes the responsibility to
use them for the purpose God intended.
And like any other gift of God, this ability to hear can be heightened
and enhanced through discipline and training, or it can be allowed to diminish
through neglect and misuse. Our goal,
then, is to maximize the fertility of the soil, to grow our ears for hearing so
that we can grow bigger ears of fruit. How do we do that?
Well, it may be helpful to think of yourself as an acre of soil that God
wants to plant – or better yet, as an entire quarter section, because then it’s
easier to see that within such a large area of land there’s going to be several
different kinds of soil present. We need
to recognize in ourselves the various types of soil that Jesus talks about. That hard packed soil, for example – it isn’t just found in
unbelievers and cultists. No, because we
still have the fallen nature very much present in us, we still have patches
where we do not let the Word of God penetrate into our hearts. They are those places where we offer
resistance to hearing, where we deliberately choose to avoid certain topics
because we find them uncomfortable or too troublesome to try to understand, or
where we know very well what God says about something and choose to ignore
it. Such hard heartedness is nothing
more than full-blown rebellion against God.
It needs to be cut up and turned over by the sharp plow blade of God’s
Law and planted with his word of forgiveness in Christ. And then there is the shallow, rocky soil. These are the places where the hard spots of
resistance lie hidden beneath the surface.
They can be, for example, secret sins that we continue to practice, but
keep in the dark while pretending that everything is as it should be. They are the sorts of sins that we dearly
cherish and do not want to be rid of, even though they prevent the life-giving
Word from reaching down with its roots deep into the soul. As a result, they cause the life of faith to
be very hypocritical and superficial. It’s
a faith that is only skin deep. The
result is that the fruit of love for God and his people is not genuine, but
only the shallow kind done for appearance sake.
It’s all show and no substance.
And worse, because the life of faith has no deep roots, when there is
trouble or a cost to bear – especially if it is on account of the Word, like
happens when one is asked to take a stand for the faith in the face of
adversity or persecution – well, then what little faith there is shrivels and
dies in the heat. Because of this, these
stubborn, stony, underground sins need to be dug out and removed too through
repentance and confession. And there are those pesky weeds – and so many different
kinds of them, each with their own pernicious tricks for spreading and
reproducing themselves. As someone who
does a little gardening, I can say that I am absolutely amazed at how sneaky
and persistent the little buggers are – and how quickly they can grow into big
buggers that take over the place entirely.
In the field of our lives, these weeds represent the competing interests
for our attention that sap precious time and resources away from our growing in
God’s Word and that prevent him from developing in us the fruits of faith. And they could be anything: friends, family, entertainment, television,
work, business, exercise, the internet, hobbies, sports, you name it – things
that in and of themselves are very good but that can become problems if allowed
to grow too large. Or, in some cases,
they may be things that have no business growing in the field to begin with –
these need to be pulled out by the roots, of course. But those other things that are not
inherently bad … just as there are no fields around here entirely free of
weeds, the important question is which plants have the upper hand? I’ve noticed that with my corn, once it
reaches a certain height, it casts enough of a shadow that most weeds can’t
effectively compete with it. If they
grow at all, they tend to be thin and scrawny.
In the same way, we need to prioritize our interests and ensure that the
life of faith gets the lion’s share of light and nutrients so that it casts its
shadow over all other aspects of our lives.
That will prevent the other things from getting out of hand and taking
over, and will ensure that we produce the harvest the Lord seeks. And if by God’s grace we do these things, we should have
ample areas of good soil in our lives for the Word to grow in. But even here, a few precautions are in
order. For example, we want to make sure
that we are planting with the best seed.
I make a point to try to stay on top of what is available today in the
way of Christian literature and radio and so on, and I have to say that an
awful lot of it promises spectacular yields – and maybe it does; but what it
produces isn’t fit for consumption. Only
get your seed from reliable sources. The
other thing to consider here is that even the best soil produces very little
when it is sown with a stingy hand. To
get more, you must plant more. Of course
with seed in a field, there is such a thing as the point of diminishing
returns, when applying more seed causes crowding that reduces the final
harvest. I don’t think there is such a
point of diminishing returns when it comes to planting the seed of God’s Word;
but if there is, I can say with confidence that none of us is in any danger of
reaching it soon. My friends, our ears have been blessed with the ability to
hear and to understand what God says to us.
That is a great gift that grants useful productivity in this life for
the Soli Deo Gloria! |
